Tasha Kheiriddin: Liberals up, Tories down, NDP sad

If there was ever a year that proved that politics can still surprise, it was 2025. U.S. President Donald Trump started it by declaring Canada the 51st state and ended it by adding his name to the Kennedy Center. Our spring federal election morphed from Conservative cakewalk to Liberal renaissance, and the winter saw a flurry of floor crossing. Alberta and Quebec are both talking about separation. And Justin Trudeau is dating Katy Perry.

Someone get me a drink, please, as we review the political drama of 2025 — and peek ahead at 2026.

For the Liberals, 2025 was an unexpectedly good year. Fortunes revived with Trump’s entry and Trudeau’s ouster, paving the way for Mark Carney to take the party leadership and win a minority in April. Since then, however, Carney has failed to get a trade deal with Trump but greenlighted a bevy of “national projects” to try and keep the economy humming. So far, so good for the Liberals: year end polls show them in a statistical tie with the Conservatives while Carney remains the most popular choice for Prime Minister.

For 2026, Carney’s goals are clear. First, secure a majority with another floor crosser or two, and second, get the best possible trade deal with the US. Canada will still face tariffs, but if Carney can engineer a carveout for most of our goods like we have under CUSMA, he can claim a win — and Canadian businesses can exhale.

For the Conservatives, 2025 was a painful lesson in political timing. Pierre Poilievre was supposed to be prime minister — until he wasn’t. In an uncertain economic climate, baby boomers voted Liberal, fearful for their houses and RRSPS, while younger voters voted Conservative, struggling with unaffordable food and housing. And despite a historic high of 41 per cent, the Conservatives were consigned to the opposition benches.

Poilievre now faces the possibility of warming those benches for another three years, should Carney lure more disgruntled Tory MPs to the Liberal fold. While Poilievre will likely survive his leadership review in January, bets are off with his caucus, many of whom resent his top-down leadership style. Poilievre’s challenge for 2026 is to rally the troops with carrots, not sticks — and try and prevent future defections.

Then there is the Bloc Québécois. Under leader Yves-François Blanchet, the party survived the election with a solid group of MPs. It got a late-season win by forcing the Liberals to remove religious exemptions from their revamp of hate speech laws. However, if Carney gets a majority, it will lose its clout. It could also see party workers and volunteers switch their focus to the provincial Parti Québécois, which is gearing up for Quebec’s fall election and a referendum on separation if it wins.

The NDP’s story is the saddest of 2025. After years of propping up the Liberals and drifting into leftist la-la land, it collapsed in a Liberal-Conservative squeeze play, as working-class voters went Tory and woke supporters went Liberal. 2026 is now a year of rebuilding, starting with a leadership race. But the NDP faces two problems: their candidates are unknown to most Canadians, and their party’s raison d’etre is similarly mysterious. Are they the party of labour unions and workers’ rights, fighting for affordability, or the party of DEI and Palestine, marching ever-leftward?

Finally, let’s not forget the Greens, languishing with a single seat under Elizabeth May. Her flip-flop this year on the budget — first she was undecided, then she liked it, then she regretted liking it — dooms her to further irrelevance, particularly if Carney gets a majority and doesn’t need her vote anymore.

And that’s a wrap! All the best to you and yours, and our politicians in 2026. If there’s one thing that’s predictable for next year, it’s that there will be a lot to write about. I’ll drink to that.

Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.